Impressive

David R. Henderson begins:

On Friday, February 19, I went to the opening dinner of a Washington, D.C. event billed as “Across the Political Spectrum Against War and Militarism.” That’s not my favorite title because it sounds as if the participants are presumed to be against all war. I’m not. I’ve just been against every war the United States has been in since 1783, with the possible exception of World War II. (And even on WWII, there’s a plausible case to be made against U.S. participation.)

The list of participants was impressive: conservatives, libertarians, and people who could probably be called variously liberals, leftists, and progressives.

Which sounds very much like the American Anti-Imperialist League that eventually endorsed William Jennings Bryan, and very much like the America First Committee of Norman Thomas (anti-Communist campaigner to build a Farm-Labour party corresponding to the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), Sargent Shriver (later Peace Corps and Special Olympics founder, and McGovern running mate), and Shriver's future brother-in-law, John F Kennedy.

Americans do not do empires. They define themselves against ours, and do not understand even what little remains of it, or the far more extensive Commonwealth ties that it has left behind. They just don't. And they never will.

Quite what the excuse of our own Political Class and its hangers on is, however...